“Threatening the lives of the city solicitor’s children is beyond comprehension to me,” Dlott said. “The court takes this with a huge amount of gravity.”

An FBI agent was in the courtroom, but it was not immediately clear if a criminal investigation is underway. Dlott said both she and the FBI would be available to Boggs Muething, and she would be available at any time or hour.

West’s lawsuit, which is before Dlott, alleges that four Cincinnati police officers included false information in their reports and in court documents about an incident last year involving West and his girlfriend.

In the early hours of March 16, 2017, the officers were called to West’s girlfriend’s Columbia Tusculum home. The lawsuit says West left after an apparent fight, went to his car but realized he was too intoxicated to drive, so he went back to his girlfriend's house. No one was awake, the lawsuit says, so he broke a window pane in a door to get back inside.

In sworn complaints, police said West broke the door window during a physical altercation. The complaints also alleged West “choked, grabbed and then forced the victim to the ground.”

The lawsuit says those statements are false. It says the girlfriend, Laura Liske, has signed an affidavit saying West had never choked her and that she has never told anyone he threw her to the ground, choked her, or caused physical injury.

West alleges the charges have damaged his reputation and that he has lost out on hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking engagements because of news reports about the incident.